Travel
The Serene One
(Three weeks from today: Island of the Mad.) “La Serenissima”, they call her: Venice, city of the waters. Venice began as a refuge, a place people might creep away from the various war-troubled stretches of mainland all around. The swampy lagoon, into which the Adriatic waters washed in and out, twice a day, had an…
Read MoreNoel’s work, continued
The past week saw two kinds of memorial to my husband, Noel King. One was a talk, the latest in a series of “Noel Q. King Lectures” held at UC Santa Cruz. The second was a publication, with Noel as co-author. After Noel died, we started up a lecture series to continue his life’s work…
Read MoreThe building of the Unbelievable
Every two years, Venice explodes in art. Even more art than its usual visual treat, that is, with the opening of Biennale, when every decaying palazzo is turned into a gallery, every house overlooking the Grand Canal has a blue man on a balcony or a huge hand holding up its wall. I hadn’t intended…
Read MoreProust’s macarons
Every so often, a moment comes along that one knows is going to linger in the mind. Such as some years ago when I took my teenage kids to Hawaii in a last-minute late-December holiday, and a catamaran diving trip to Molokini turned for home with a deck-side barbecue and a blast of Alana’s Morisette’s…
Read MoreEdgar week!
Last week I was in New York for Edgars week, a whirlwind of writers and publishers and really good food and more to drink in two days than I had over the past two months. Wednesday was the Edgars week symposium, which is always interesting and this year was amazing: first-rate authors (most of their…
Read MoreOne writer’s travails
Left Coast Crime is an annual conference that moves around the left coast, generally of the US. This year LCC was in Honolulu. Like the other moveable crime conferences, location is a prime consideration, since fans and readers use this as a holiday as well as a chance to meet their favorite writers. So, the…
Read MoreRoad trip with Laurie! (and a Murdered Mary?)
So here’s me, from April 5 until April 15:The Murder of Mary Russell will launch at the amazing and wonderfully warm Anderson’s Books (yay!) in Naperville (near Chicago.) They hosted an event for me a year ago—and made a great video interview. So when I learned that I’d be passing through Chicago, I brought forward my bowl to…
Read MoreCoffee week: 1
My husband was a tea man. He drank proper tea, from a pot, and although he was a truly and creatively dreadful cook, Noel made a better pot of tea than I did. Coffee, though: that was all me. I have a long history with coffee. When I was putting myself through university, I worked in…
Read MoreThe Queen’s Beekeeper
Two of my friends (and yours) are off in London, where they’re attending the dedication of Jeremy Brett’s park bench, seeing various Russell friends, and… seeing the work of the Royal Beekeeper. Now, the claim is that this gent goes by the name of John Chapple, but we have to wonder, don’t we, if the…
Read MoreOoh: Maps!
I love maps. I’m always thrilled to have the excuse of a story that just NEEDS a map at the front (because honest, nobody knows what India looks like, or England, so we have to put one in there, right?) Anyway, when I was in London in May, I was headed to the Victoria &…
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